Towards an integrated value optimizing ecosystem in natural gas liquids operations and related facilities

Abstract

Although natural gas is one of the cleanest fuels on earth, natural gas operations and related facilities are still associated with visible ecological and waste management problems. While managing regulated waste is a direct cost to operations, managing unregulated waste is an indirect cost. However, waste becomes ‘waste’ when a production operation is totally isolated from the rest of the world. For example, Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) plants process natural gas into raw natural gas liquids, lean gas or refinery products. In doing so, a number of ‘losses’ may take place along the process system through either leaks and/or process upsets. Such loses can be considered as wastes due to inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of the process system. On the other hand, excess gas may be flared or be reinjected to enrich reservoirs. In such a case, the flared gas is a missed opportunity which also has negative consequences such CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions. Although excess gas reinjection is a more responsible alternative, it cannot be guaranteed that 100 % of the excess gas ear marked for reinjection will be actually reinjected to enrich the resource. This scenario leads to the issue of depleting finite resources. Whatever the case may be, any form of ‘waste’ does not give value to the business, employees or consumers of the end product. As such, it is important for operations to look beyond their boundaries for possibilities of creating value out of inevitable ‘waste.’ One way of meeting this challenge is to develop an integrated value optimizing ecosystem that seeks to eliminate waste or at least convert ‘waste’ into value. In this paper, it is postulated that value can be created through utilizing ‘waste’ by integrating NGL operations and related facilities. In order to allow the ecosystem to evolve as and when required, a framework for continuously creating, maintaining and sustaining value in NGL operations and related facilities is proposed. The operational aspects of such a framework are discussed with the aid of an NGL plant case study. It is shown that in an integrated value optimizing industrial ecosystem ‘waste’ can be eliminated or at least be reduced to a minimum while value to the customer and business operations is increased. This allows operations to progressively move towards a closed loop operating system where ‘wastes’ become inputs for current, new and future processes.